Since Daisy Creek

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Colin Dobbs, English professor, is at a very low ebb. His creative powers have failed him. Unable to write, unsuccessful in his broken marriage as in his failed parenthood, unfulfilled in his profession, he is now half-destroyed in his physical being. Dobbs lies in a hospital bed, slowly recuperating from a near-fatal attack by a grizzly bear. In his pain and desolation he becomes obsessed with a desire to acquire the hide of the huge beast that mauled him.

The hunting mishap up Daisy Creek proves to be the pivotal point in Dobbs’s life, quite apart from the damage to his body. During his recovery he is nursed by his estranged daughter Annie and, warmed by her love, is able to come to terms with most of his other problems. The hide of the grizzly, however, becomes the focus of another dangerous hunt, this time through the courtroom in pursuit of a dishonest taxidermist, and it involves the welcome reappearance in print of Archie Nicotine, the laconic Stoney Indian guide who is one of Mitchell’s best-loved creations. The master is at the top of his form in this suspenseful, often hilarious story of a man’s return to health and to life.